Bad to the bone, the controversial documentary on Whitey Bulger

The whole truth about notorious Irish American mobster Whitey Bulger may never be known.

No one doubts that the FBI’s Most Wanted career criminal Whitey Bulger was guilty of his crimes. Not even Whitey Bulger himself doubts it.

But as a hard hitting new documentary on his life and trial reminds us, the truth is never pure and rarely simple.

What makes "Whitey: United States of America versus James J. Bulger" so compelling is that two time Emmy winning director Joe Berlinger gives voice to every shade of opinion in this twisted tale.

Some people wanted Bulger captured and prosecuted for his crimes, but still others wanted him to live out his days on the run in the apparent hope that their own misdeeds would never come to light.

That’s why they gave Bulger a five van police cordon on his way to and from his 2013 trial, Berlinger’s documentary makes clear. There was serious concern that a sniper might try to silence Bulger before the truth came out.

But as Berlinger’s controversial new documentary makes clear, the whole truth has not come out yet – far from it. In fact, questions still hang over the exact nature of Bulger’s relationship with federal law enforcement.

Was Bulger an FBI informant as most people believe, or was this claim a distancing tactic by the government to protect itself and preserve its prior Mafia convictions the film asks?

“I’m not from Boston and so I was surprised that people were so welcoming to me to tell the story,” Berlinger tells the Irish Voice.

“Boston has a reputation for being a little guarded about letting people in. The fact that an outsider came in to Southie [the heavily Irish American neighborhood and Bulger’s old stomping grounds], I thought I was going to get a lot more resistance. But people were terrific.”

Families of Bulger’s victims were more used to being ignored or passed over, Berlinger discovered, so the opportunity to tell their stories was a relief.

“I was always fascinated by the Bulger story. His brother rises to the top of the political machine and Whitey rises to the top of Boston’s organized crime. And for the whole of his time at the top – involving murder, intimidation and drug trafficking – he isn’t issued so much as a traffic ticket,” Berlinger says.

There isn’t another contemporary gangster in America who has become more of a cultural fascination, because the myth-making about Bulger is non-stop, with Johnny Depp about to star in "Black Mass" and Ben Affleck casting Matt Damon as Bulger in their own hometown version.

“I never thought I had anything to say about Whitey precisely because he has already been so popular. There have been a dozen TV shows, there are multiple books, feature films are being shot, there’s been plenty of stuff done about him,” Berlinger said.

But when it was announced Bulger had been arrested in California in 2011 after 16 years on the lam, Berlinger’s ears perked up. Then when a trial date was set it promised to be the biggest gangster trial in Massachusetts since the 1920s.

“I’m a guy who likes to go beneath the surface and tell the story behind the story, so here was an opportunity to separate the man from the myth,” the director says. He couldn’t pass it up.

As Bulger says of himself, he was a murderer, he was a criminal and he was a drug dealer, but he didn’t kill women and he was never an FBI informer.

Growing up Irish American, Bulger was keenly aware of the special contempt the Irish hold for touts. He didn’t care what anyone said of him as long as they didn’t call him a rat, the film shows. Whether or not you believe him is up to yourself, of course.

“I focus on that because that’s what his defense centered on. The film doesn’t present that claim as the gospel truth,” Berlinger says.

“That’s the driving question of the film. Is Bulger burnishing his image before ascending into the criminal hall of fame? Is he manipulating all of us by making that claim, or is there some validity to it?”

That’s the question that Berlinger wants the audience to ask, and that’s the question for investigators to answer, not for the sake of Whitey and his legacy, but in the interest of truth.

“Whitey was a vicious killer who deserves to be behind bars. But I’m an advocate for the truth, particularly for the victims' family members who deserve to know how their loved ones died,” says Berlinger.

“And I think that every citizen of the United States system of justice should be concerned about what happened and why.”

If Bulger was an informant we still don’t know how high up the FBI chain of command the conspiracy went. Who knew that Bulger was allowed to kill and extort without censure?